That reminds me, all the Macs at my uni are base-model 21.5" iMacs. Some 2013 models, some 2017. Guess what they all use? 5400 rpm HDDs. Of course you have to come early for midterms so you don't lose any time waiting for bloody things to boot up and open all the apps.
To make things worse, the 2017 models (and those are the most abysmal iMacs probably ever made) are clearance models bought in 2020, or early 2021. The point being, had they not been clearance models, they would've had SSDs, as Apple started putting SSDs even in that laptop-CPU'd model some time in 2020.
At least all the Windows machines have been upgraded with SSDs, but to make things even worse, those 2017 iMacs replaced all of the 2011 21.5" iMacs, which, despite being ancient by today's standards and unsupported for a long time, had 7200 rpm HDDs, so they were ever so slightly faster!